Mansfield Park

I am a professed Jane Austen fan and I have a confession to make: I have never read Mansfield Park. I believe I have actually been living in denial of this fact because when I went to add the book to my goodreads account I found I had already marked it as read. Shame on me. 

I have started Mansfield Park about five times and always ended up putting the book down around the part where Fanny is left on a bench in the park while everyone else is having romantic intrigues around her. My problem, I suppose, is that Fanny never seemed to be an active participant in anything. She's not boring, but I wanted her to be different. A little more vibrant and a little less moral. 

Fanny is the most passive, philosophic, introverted, self-deprecating heroine of Austen’s creation. At times, she really seemed to have a serious self-esteem problem. Still, one can’t hate her just because she’s not Elizabeth Bennett. Not everyone can be witty and self-confident. Mansfield Park is different, the characters more complicated than Austen’s other works. I found that I was actually hoping for the rake - a staple character in Austen’s fiction who is the young, dishonest man that tries to flirt his way into the amiable heroines good graces only to end up eloping to Scotland with a far less amiable character, usually a silly sister or cousin - to make his conquest and not be the jerk I knew him to be. 

Of course, everything ended as it should, but the process of getting there was stranger and more complicated than I’m used to in an Austen novel. It was definitely worth the read and now I can hold my head high when I proclaim: I love Jane Austen!